5.4 Profile 4

Frontier College has been operating literacy programs in prisons for the past five years. Only in the past two years has the college operated a literacy program in the Kingston Prison for Women (P4W). The program began by matching trained community tutors with students interested in working on reading and writing. The program was then enlarged to include peer tutor training workshops. Three such workshops have taken place, resulting in six current peer-tutor matches.

Women in P4W are referred to the program in a variety of ways. Word of mouth referrals are made by women in the program, as well as tutors, Telidon announcements, and Elizabeth Fry workers. These tutor/student sessions are based on a learner-centred model. The goals are set by both the student and the tutor. The tutoring is highly individualized, and begins at the student's highest level of ability. Some of the materials that are used to teach reading and writing come from the lives of the students: they write their own life stories, as well as poems and letters, which are used as tools for learning.

The formal education programming available to the women is in the prison school. There, two full-time teachers work on a 12 to one ratio with the women. Adult Basic Education is offered, as well as computer programs and word processing. Upon entering the prison, inmates receive a mandatory S.C.A.T. test; if they score below the Grade Eight level, upgrading becomes a requirement for employment in the institution, as well as part of their case management.

A review of the literacy services in place at P4W leads one to conclude that sufficient literacy services are in place for women to access them. This is the case for literacy, but not for Trades Training programs, which are virtually non-existent.

While literacy resources are present, there are many powerful obstacles preventing women from using them. In addition to the ever-present stigma of illiteracy is the institutional overlay of a woman making herself more vulnerable within the prison population at large. As one woman who had served time in P4W stated, "as a woman in jail, you're in a minority, but if you admit you can't read and write, you're more of a minority, and more vulnerable." She also reflected on the possibility of women being able to learn while incarcerated. Drawing on her personal experience, she questioned whether anyone could be interested in learning when "you come back from school to find the woman in the next cell had been stabbed." She described how most of women's energy at P4W goes into merely surviving.

An experienced literacy worker in the prison echoed these sentiments. She observed that women who do learn in prison have to have tremendous support, coupled with their own determination. Survival is the primary agenda. The environment is so debilitating in the short term that it is very difficult to plan for the long term.